Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…

Monday, September 11, 2017

The America-Bashers' Use of Symbolism on September 11

As Le Monde commemorated 911 on the tenth anniversary of the attacks, Plantu was back in his usual style, with a full page inside Le Monde Magazine
bringing back 10 years of cartoons that belittle the human toll; or that
suggest that Uncle Sam deserved whatever it had coming; or that compare
the 2011 attacks of September 11, 2001, to Pinochet's coup d'état in
Chile on September 11, 1973.

(This causes him to make
—intentionally? — a colossal whopper, saying that 3,000 people died on
September 11, 2001, just as 3,000 people died on September 11, 1973; in
reality, 3,000 lives were lost during Pinochet's 17 years in power (not
one day but close to 6,000 days) — nothing to be proud of, for sure, but
facts need to be gotten right and in addition, whatever the toll is, it
needs to be compared to those of neighboring régimes, like the 20,000
dead in Fidel Castro's Cuba.)

So
No Pasarán is looking back at 10 years' worth of posts (six or seven,
really) as well and checking out what it has been saying on the subjects
so dear to the hearts of leftists everywhere.

1) Let's first take a look at the "legend", according to which,

in
the immediate aftermath of 9/11 the US enjoyed the heartfelt sympathy
of the world, only to see this capital of goodwill frittered away by
the successive faux pas of an inept and arrogant Bush administration and then definitively exhausted by the launching of an illegitimate war on Iraq in defiance of “world public opinion.”

Such was the tenor of Le Monde’s
coverage, in effect, just one week after the attacks. The monotonous
drone of denunciations continued as the prospect of a military strike
against Afghanistan materialized in the weeks ahead, with distraught
“New York Jews,” Pashtun warlords and the estranged son of the “O’Dea,”
the archetypal all-American family, all chiming in to register their
protest and all sounding surprisingly like “third-worldist” Parisian
intellectuals – or even indeed like the publisher of Le Monde.
(Among other things, the legend of the squandered sympathy occludes
the fact that even while a substantial majority of Europeans polled,
including in France and Germany, showed spontaneous understanding for
American military actions in Afghanistan, large swaths of Europe’s
socialist and social-democratic intelligentsia opposed any American
military response to the 9/11 attacks whatsoever.) The “boomerang” image
went on to become the favored heuristic device of Le Monde and its affiliated publications in their treatment of 9/11. Thus the first issue of the monthly Monde Diplomatique to appear following the events
bore the thematic headline “Boomerang Effect” [it also has an article
by Maureen Dowd]. In a pictorial variation on the same theme, a special
insert in Le Monde
itself featured a cartoon depicting a little wind-up Taliban doll,
“Made in USA” emblazoned across its back, carrying red, white and blue
explosives and circling back toward Uncle Sam.

2) Now let's take a look at the state of democracy and human rights in Chile in 1973 by looking at the (very real) similarities between the overthrow of Manuel Zelaya and that of Salvador Allende

President
Allende became a tyrant when he broke his solemn oath to respect the
Constitution and the Chilean laws [and because] his government [had]
fomented the creation of armed militias … the origin of the Pinochet
government is that of any revolutionary one, in which only the use of
force was left in order to remove a tyrant [and to] "put immediate end"
to these constitutional violations.
It must be agreed that this was, in fact, an unequivocal call to
remove by force the President who had initiated the use of force with
the purpose of imposing a communist dictatorship.
…the truth
demands recognition that former President Pinochet led a legitimate
rebellion against tyranny and that the origin of Chile's civil war
--and its victims-- lies with former President Allende and his marxist
Socialist party. … The Economist said it clearly at the time: "The
temporary death of democracy in Chile will be regrettable, but the
blame lies clearly with Dr. Allende and those of his followers who
persistently overrode the Constitution" (September 15, 1973).

It’s wrong to say that the CIA, the armed forces, and the bourgeoisie alone brought down the Allende government. It’s obvious we need to admit we madecritical economical and political errors that wereas decisive if not more decisive

Isn't One of the Left's Fundamental "Rational" Beliefs About the Events of 9-11 Closely Related to Superstition?

How many times did we hear after 9-11
that this was America's comeuppance, its punishment, notably for what
happened in Santiago on September 11, 1973? Ils l'ont bien mérité!

This is
what is referred to as poetic justice. But isn't it true that you have
to wonder what poetic justice means actually, and not bring it out
whenever you feel that argument can serve your designs?

Allow
me to give you a personal example of poetic justice. In a plane waiting
on the runway one day years ago, I witnessed a passenger who loudly
demanded, in no uncertain terms, to be allowed to change seats
immediately. The flight attendant was busy for preparing the plane for
takeoff, and to wait until the plane was in the air, but the youngish
man said he could not stand crying babies, there was one a few seats
behind him, and he wanted a change of seats — now. Finally, she
gave in and placed him in another seat. What she hadn't realized, as the
plane was preparing for takeoff, was that another baby would start
crying just then — far louder and far closer to the man than the other
toddler had been. And as the flight attendant walked down the aisle, she
couldn't help it, she was grinning from ear to ear. As were I and all
the passengers who had witnessed the exchange.

This is poetic justice. Poetic justice is not
the passenger's sister happening to sit next to a crying baby five
months later. Or the passenger's son missing a flight five years later.
Nor is it another, totally unrelated in any fashion, passenger from the
same city as the arrogant young man, albeit neither family member nor
friend or acquaintance, being forced to sit next to a vomiting fatso 20
years after the fact.

For the question needs to be asked, then, who, or what, is/was behind this revenge, this poetic justice?! This is the question you are not supposed to ask! Or even think about!

Was it Osama Ben
Laden? Is there any reason to think the leader of Al Qaeda thought any better
of the Chilean unbelievers than of the American unbelievers (whether the
Chileans were/are Allende followers or whether they were/are Pinochet supporters or
whether they were/are apolotical) and didn't treat them all as the infidel dogs the whole bunch of 'em were/are?

Besides, September 11 holds no
meaning for Muslims as not only do they not live under the West's
calendar year, they don't even live according to the same type of calendar, the solar
year. They live according to the shorter lunar year — meaning (besides the fact that over
the course of several years [both lunar and solar, take your pick], a given month
will end up falling during a totally different season), the
chances for the equivalent of September 11 for 2001 (1422 for the
Muslims) falling on the same day for 1973 (1393 for the Muslims) are
extremely low (not 1 in 365 but 1 in 354) and indeed turn out to be, as
expected, unfounded. (9-11 in the "year or our Lord" 1973 turns out to be 8-13 in the year of the Prophet 1393 for the Muslims while 9-11 of 2001 turns out to be 6-22 of 1422.)

Who, then, or what, is this entity that wished to punish America for 9-11?

I ask this of people, remember, who scoff at the existence of (a) God and of the Devil.

Is it Mother Nature? Gaia?

Alright,
if Gaia and/or Mother Nature is/are so wise: answer me this: Why use
Muslims in the four planes? Why Muslim fundamentalists? Why not
Chileans? Or at least Hispanics?

Why
wait 28 years? Why not bring vengeance two years later? Or 28
minutes later? Or 28 days later? Or 28 weeks later? Or 28 months
later? Or 280 years later?

Why
punish people in the World Trade Center, the vast majority of who
probably knew little to nothing about South American history (recent or
old)?

How about this,
Gaia? Why not punish… (wait for it) General Pinochet?! That same year?
Or, if you insist on punishing Americans, why not punish… Richard Nixon
and Henry Kissinger? Or, if you insist on a plane crashing in the Pentagon, why wait for 2001 instead of… 1973 or 1974?

As
you can see, to call the 911 attacks the revenge, or the poetic justice, of Gaia
or of Mother Nature — or even (why not?) the vengeance of God the Father as described in the
Bible — doesn't make much sense when one spends some time thinking
about it.

The
problem with this, of course, is that there have occurred 500
September 11s in the past 500 years (to take the first round number
that came to my mind), with varying occurrences on various continents,
in various countries, in various regions, in various cities, in
various neighborhoods, and in various personal homes around the world,
and just about any one of those occurrences could have been picked to
make a comparison with (and provide matter for reflection on, and some
kind of metaphysical lesson for) September 11, 2001 (or September 11,
1973, for that matter).

If
looking down their noses, [America-bashers] ask "Do you know what
other event occurred on September 11?", answer "Yes, a terrible
tragedy." Pause while they nod approvingly, then add "George Washington lost the battle of Brandywine" (in 1777) or even "Brian De Palma was born on that date" (so was Ferdinand Marcos,
by the way), although I'm not sure to what extent that counts as a
tragedy. If they object that they are referring to something more recent
and more tragic than that, agree and say "you must be talking of Hitler ordering reinforcements to Romania" (1940) or "FDR ordering any Axis ships in U.S. waters shot on sight" (1941) or even "wasn't it the first TV broadcast of a Miss America
beauty contest?" (1954). How about, "that was the date (in 1962) that
the Beatles recorded their first single at EMI Studios (you know, 'Love
Love Me Do')".

This symbolism makes as much sense as noting with alarm that our 40th president sported three names with six letters each, supposedly marking the alleged number of the beast.

(If
any association with September 11 should be made — with regards to the
2001 attacks, that is, not the 1973 coup — as several readers have
pointed out to me, it would perhaps make more sense to call up the 1669
defeat of the Muslim armies besieging Vienna, bringing an end to the
Ottoman advance into Europe.)

But what it all boils down to this:
for symbolism to have any kind of meaning, it needs to stay close to
its subject and, in my opinion, reflect on the better angels of our nature. What it should especially avoid is collective guilt, not least because that collective guilt is necessarily one-sided,
i.e., used exclusively against Americans and their allies (or,
historically, by any group against any group's alleged enemies).

For
instance, it would probably not be too difficult to search through
Chilean history and find some kind of tragedy (nation-wide or otherwise)
on a September 11 that proved that the 1973 coup d'état was the Chileans'
punishment for the earlier disaster (notwithstanding the fact that
many believe that Pinochet's coup averted a far worse catastrophe for
the country). In another example, which is actually far more coherent
than simply noting a similarity of dates, many state that every setback
by Bush or by a Bush ally amounts to (well-deserved) punishment for sending troops to Iraq, but because members of the Coalition of the Willing keep winning elections, this symbolism is discretely ignored. (I call this the wait, wait, wait syndrome.)

The use of symbolism says far more about those who wield it than about those the symbolism is meant to describe (and judge).

So, anyway: we know the date that Pinochet grabbed power in 1973.

Bien.

But what was the date that he relinquished power?

What was the date in 1990 that Pinochet handed power back to a civilian government?

The answer is: March 11.

Now, we all remember what happened in Madrid on March 11, 2004, don't we?

So what is that supposed to mean? What is that supposed to symbolize?

Somehow,
we are led to believe, the wholescale murder of 3,000 people in New
York and Washington would not, or might not, have occurred had a
strongman with no link to (and probably wholly unknown to) the
perpetrators not grabbed power on that same date 28 years earlier.

What
is the wholescale murder of 191 people in Madrid supposed to mean?
That it would not have occurred had that same strongman not handed
power back and had he remained in power 14 years earlier?